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The main opposition candidate for governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, said Friday he is opposed to same-sex marriage.

“I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. Having said that, it can’t be used as an excuse to discriminate against people who think differently,” the PPD hopeful said at a rally in the northern town of Trujillo Alto.

He said that everyone’s rights must be defended, after saying that marriage between a man and a woman is linked to Puerto Rico’s quality of life.

“If we want to improve the quality of life in Puerto Rico, if we want to propose real ideas that care for the family unit, we must favor that basic principle of Christianity that marriage is between a man and a woman,” Garcia Padilla said.

“We have to make sure that both that man and that woman have jobs, that they have adequate health services and that their children have access to an adequate education,” he said.

Garcia Padilla is hoping to deny a second term to Luis Fortuño, who favors U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico and has included on the November ballot a non-binding question on the island’s status.

While Puerto Ricans are mainly worried about crime and the island’s weak economy, the governor’s Republican-allied PNP is trying to make the status question a central issue in the campaign.

The PPD, which has ties to the Democrats, wants Puerto Rico to remain a commonwealth, though with greater autonomy from Washington.

Barack Obama said in Miami Thursday that his “biggest failure” as president has been the lack of progress on immigration reform and expressed regret for having been “naive” to think Republicans would work with him on the issue.

The Democratic incumbent offered that admission toward the end of a “Meet the Candidate” forum organized by Univision, the nation’s leading Spanish-language network.

Univision anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas posed questions in Spanish and Obama answered in English before a Democratic audience at the University of Miami.

“(W)hat I’m absolutely certain of is if the Latino community and the American community that cares about this issue turns out to vote, they can send a message that this is not something to use as a political football, that people’s lives are at stake, that this is a problem that we can solve and historically has had bipartisan support,” the president said when Ramos asked about the chances of immigration reform if Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives.

“So my hope is, is that after the election ... if they (the Republicans) have seen that people who care about this issue have turned out in strong numbers, that they will rethink it, if not because it’s the right thing to do, at least because it’s in their political interest to do so,” Obama said.

After starting the conversation with a question about current events in the Middle East, Ramos confronted the president over his failure to keep his 2008 campaign promise to pass immigration reform.

“You promised that. And a promise is a promise. And with all due respect, you didn’t keep that promise,” Ramos said to Obama.

The president said his first months in office were dominated by efforts to deal with an economy “on the verge of collapse.”

“But even in that first year,” he insisted, “one of my first acts was to invite every single member of Congress who had previously been supportive of comprehensive immigration reform, and to say to them, we need to get this done.”

“There’s the thinking that the president is somebody who is all-powerful and can get everything done,” Obama said.

“In our branch, in our system of government, I am the head of the executive branch. I’m not the head of the legislature, I’m not the head of the judiciary,” he said.

“And what I confess I did not expect - and so I’m happy to take responsibility for being naive here - is that Republicans who had previously supported comprehensive immigration reform - my opponent in 2008 (Sen. John McCain), who had been a champion of it and who attended these meetings - suddenly would walk away. That’s what I did not anticipate,” Obama said.

“What I promised was that I would work every single day as hard as I can to make sure that everybody in this country, regardless of who they are, what they look like, where they come from, that they would have a fair shot at the American Dream. And I have - that promise I’ve kept,” he said.

The president added that while he has never “wavered” in backing immigration reform, Republican rival Mitt Romney has said “he would veto the DREAM Act, that he is uncertain about what his plan for immigration reform would be, and who considers the Arizona law a model for the nation and has suggested that the main solution for immigration is self-deportation.”

Romney, appearing in a separate “Meet the Candidate” forum at UM on Wednesday night, rejected mass deportation but was otherwise non-committal on his approach to the immigration issue.

Obama took more than 60 percent of the Latino vote in 2008 and polls show him with a similar lead over Romney among Hispanics.

Maximiliano Hernandez, who plays special agent Jasper Sitwell in the movie “The Avengers,” believes the time has come for Latinos to have their own superhero.

“Of course the time has come to have our own superhero! I think that would be something wonderful for Latino kids because when you see people very much like yourself in positions of power, you feel that you can get there too,” he told Efe.

Hernandez believes the chance to see a Latino superhero on the big screen is not far away.

“We Hispanics have been making strides in Hollywood since the very beginning. Jose Ferrer, Ricardo Montalban. They opened the way and today’s audiences are receptive to characters of other ethnicities,” Hernandez said.

The Brooklyn native discovered his love of acting in high school, when he agreed to take drama classes to avoid detention.

“I didn’t want to be punished by having to stay after school so I went to acting classes…and I fell in love,” he laughed.

From that moment he was on his way as a stage actor, then moved to Los Angeles where his career took off with parts in television programs including “24” and “Numbers” and films like “Hotel for Dogs.”

At the moment he is rehearsing to portray a Latino FBI agent in “The Americans,” a television series set in the 1980s.

“In that period there weren’t many Latino agents, so my character seems different from the rest. And that allows me to create a background for the character that is more complex and emotional,” he said.

Whether you are new to wine or a long time wine lover, the Playboy Wine Club promises exclusivity, innovation and style while guaranteeing excellent value at all levels. All the wines offered through Playboy Wine Club are curated by an expert panel that is focused on approachable luxury. We don’t play by the old rules, rather we make our own. That is why we find wines, not just from the most renowned growing regions but also by looking to areas that most wine marketers barely know exist.

A Guillermo Del Toro-helmed pilot of The Strain, named after his vampire novel trilogy, has been ordered by FX.

The drama series was snagged by FX after a number of networks were reportedly vying for it.

The novels the show is based on, were co-written by del Toro and Chuck Hogan, who is also said to be tied to the pilot as the script’s co-writer.

Del Toro spoke with Deadline recently, saying he “believes the books have enough juice to fill three to five seasons,” much like Lost, which was also always meant to be a limited-run venture.

In fact, Lost’s Carlton Cuse will help develop The Strain, and will be working as executive producer and showrunner.

The drama/horror series will be directed and executive produced by del Toro.

The story revolves around a vampiric virus that infects New York and quickly spreads. Dr. Ephraim “Eph” Goodweather, head of the Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, is joined by former professor Abraham Setrakian and a group of fighters to stop the contagion and save the city.

Predictably, del Toro’s vampires are far different than those currently on television. This vampirism is caused by a virus-causing parasite, and the vampires themselves are far different than anything we’ve seen/read about before.

Earlier this year, we shared a very special story – the story of Caine’s Arcade and the filmmaker, Nirvan Mullick , who presented Caine to the world.

In Mullick ‘s 11-minute short, he told the story of 9-year-old Caine who had created an entire arcade in his father’s auto parts store using cardboard boxes. Within weeks, days really, Mullick’s film about Caine received 7 million views, sparked a scholarship fund for Caine, and inspired many around the globe to create their very own cardboard creations.

Following the film, Mullick and others involved in the short’s creation, were able to form the Imagination Foundation along with a matching challenge grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation.

The Imagination Foundation started a Caine’s Arcade School Pilot Program, where over 100 schools in 9 countries used the film and cardboard arcade building to teach kids math, science, engineering, art, entrepreneurship, storytelling, creative thinking, and more.

To encourage a “world-wide celebration of play, creativity and community,” The Global Cardboard Challenge project was started.

Learn more about The Global Cardboard Challenge on October 6th (the 1-year anniversary of the flash mob that changed Caine’s life) and catch up a bit with Caine himself in the video below.

“The Idea is not only to give kids the tools to build the things that they can imagine,” Mullick said, “but to also to imagine the world that they can build.”

A school shooting plot by two sixth-graders was foiled by authorities in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A spokesperson for the Albuquerque Public Schools confirmed the plot at the Tony Hillerman Middle School that was covered when one of the students disclosed it during a counseling session.

It is being reported one of the students involved was displaying suicidal tendencies and was involved in obtaining counseling at the school. The students had plans to shoot up the school and then planned to kill themselves later this year.

The Tony Hillerman Middle School is one of 53 middle schools in Albuquerque’s public school district. The majority of students in the district are Latino and six out of 10 students qualify for free or reduced meals.

The AP is reporting that Mexican police have shot and killed three gunmen that fired on them as they were searching for the 131 missing prisoners in Piedras Negras.

The three gunmen that fired at Mexican authorities were in a residential part of Piedras Negras driving a truck reported stolen in San Antonio, Texas. It is not known yet if the three men are escapees from the Piedras Negras state prison.

This past Monday more than 100 inmates walked out through the main gate of the prison not through a tunnel as originally thought.

Statements from three fugitives who were recaptured Wednesday indicate the mass escape took place via the prison gate and prison personnel are believe to have aided the escapees. The mass escape is thought to have been orchestrated by Los Zetas drug cartel to replenish their ranks.

Piedras Negras, a city of some 150,000 people sits just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

A Wisconsin woman has been convicted of killing both a pregnant woman and her fetus when she attacked the mother and tried to remove the fetus.

Annette Morales-Rodriguez, 34, now faces a mandatory life sentence for killing the full-term fetus of 23-year-old Maritza Ramirez-Cruz as well as the mother herself.

Morales-Rodriguez reportedly wanted to have a son with her boyfriend but was unable to “stay pregnant.” She claimed she had lied about being pregnant twice before, but both times ultimately claiming she’d miscarried. After lying about being pregnant for a third time, and with the made-up due date approaching, Morales-Rodriguez grew desperate and thought up a plan.

The wannabe mother reportedly staked out a Latino community center known for helping expecting mothers and found Ramirez-Cruz who was in her 40th week of pregnancy.

In October 2011, Morales-Rodriguez offered Ramirez-Cruz a ride home, lured her to her Morales-Rodriguez’s home, and bludgeoned and choked the mother of 3 until she was unconscious. Using an x-acto knife, Morales-Rodriguez cut the fetus from its mother.

An autopsy determined Ramirez-Cruz died from a combination of blunt force trauma, asphyxiation, and blood loss.

While Morales-Rodriguez’s attorney urged the jury to convict her client of a lesser charge, first-degree reckless homicide, Morales-Rodriguez was ultimately convicted of two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. While she will be sentenced to life in prison, a judge may give the possibility of parole for Morales-Rodriguez.

A guilty plea was entered, as Morales-Rodriguez admitted to police what she had done. However, her attorney argued she was merely “reckless” because she never intended to kill the mother or child.

Ramirez-Cruz leaves behind three children, ages 3, 5, and 7. They, along with their father, Christian Mercado, are currently receiving psychiatric help to cope with this unspeakable loss. Mercado’s father moved into the apartment below the family’s shortly after the 2011 incident so he and his fiancé could help his son care for the children.

Border Patrol agents responding to a distress call in a Mission, Texas home found 65 immigrants being held against their will allegedly at gunpoint and being charged outlandish prices to be fed and nourished.

The immigrants are from El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico with eight of them unaccompanied minors. Two men also undocumented were arrested at the stash house on charges of human smuggling. One of the men, 32-year-old Jose Manuel Cisneros Lopez claims he was working at human smuggling because he owed his human smugglers $2,300 for his illegal passage to the U.S.

The rescued migrants allege they were charged ‘exorbitant prices for food and water.” One migrant claimed he was charged $10 for a bottled of Gatorade, according to The Monitor.

Mission, Texas is located in the Rio Grande Valley and has an overwhelming Latino population. Other migrant stash houses have been found in this town of 40,000, one just discovered earlier this week.

Check out the hilarious video, well it does depend on which side of the political fence you are on, spoofing ‘Fox and Friends’ coverage of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by Saturday Night Live. The “Fox and Friends on Romney Cold Open” pokes fun at the secret video taken of Republican candidate Romney in May when he speaks of the 47% of the American vote he won’t ever get.

In the video Romney is portrayed as rich, hating poor people, and confused by blacks. The Latinos didn’t fare much matter pegged as cooks at McDonald’s that “no habla inglés.”

Patricia Lopez, 37, was employed for more than five years as a domestic worker, babysitter, cook, housekeeper and even gardener by a professor at California State University, Northridge.

She was always paid in cash and did not accrue time off or vacation time.

In January, she says, a 7-year-old boy under her care - bothered because she did not let him play because it was time to go to school - made her fall down the stairs from the second floor of the house and she hit her head and lost consciousness.

As a result of the accident, she has frequently needed a wheelchair, suffers from nausea, vomiting, headaches and numbness in her arms and legs, Lopez told Efe.

“According to what the doctor told me, I hurt my spine and if I have an operation I only have a 35 percent chance of recovering,” said Lopez, who has no medical insurance and faces more than $90,000 in medical bills.

Her employer, David T. Russell, not only has not apologized for the child’s act but has also refused to verify the time she worked.

“Patricia’s case shows that thousands of workers in California are being subjected to modern-day slavery,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, which is assisting Lopez.

He invited the Hispanic community to a demonstration to be held on Sept. 29 at which Gov. Jerry Brown will be asked to sign the bill protecting the rights of domestic workers.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that his campaign is aimed at 100 percent of the U.S. population and added that he was convinced of his ability to redirect the economy to improve the quality of life for all.

“My campaign is about the 100 percent of America,” he said here at a “Meet the Candidate” forum organized by Univision, the country’s leading Spanish-language network.

“I know I’m not going to get 100 percent of the vote, And my campaign will focus on those people we think we can bring in to support me,” the former Massachusetts governor said when asked about his recently-leaked comments at fund-raising event where he labeled 47 percent of the electorate as dependent on government.

“But this is a campaign about helping people who need help, and right now the people who are poor in this country need help getting out of poverty, the people in the middle class need help because their incomes have gone down every year for the last four years,” Romney continued.

“I have a record. I have demonstrated my capacity to help the 100 percent,” he said, still trying to play down his dismissal of the 47 percent as voters who will choose President Barack Obama “no matter what.”

“These are people who pay no income tax,” Romney said at the fundraiser, referring to the 47-percent group, which includes retirees, students and working people whose adjusted gross income is too low to be subject to federal income tax, though they do pay payroll levies.

At that same fund-raising dinner he said that if his late father, auto executive and one-time Michigan Gov. George Romney - the son of U.S. expatriates then living in Mexico - had “been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot of winning this.”

“I think for political purposes that might have helped me here at the University of Miami today,” Mitt Romney said Wednesday night in response to a question about the earlier remark.

On Friday, President Obama will participate in a similar interview, and it will be the first time in history in an election campaign for both main U.S. candidates to provide back-to-back interviews directed specifically at the Hispanic audience.

The issues dealt with during the interview included timely subjects of interest for Latinos including the temporary suspension of deportations decreed by Obama for young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Romney elected not to state clearly whether or not he would end the Deferred Action program, but he did say he would not “round up people and deport them.”

“We’re not going to round up 12 million people, and that includes the kids,” he said.

His position, he said, is to reform the immigration system, which he called “a political football” that both parties have been tossing back and forth.

The GOP candidate said that he approved of legal immigration because this country lives and breathes from the vitality of immigration.

On the subject of jobs, and after noting that Hispanics have gone for 56 months with an unemployment rate above 10 percent, he said he would create employment in the energy sector and in foreign trade, as well as improve training “for the jobs of tomorrow.”

He also said he would empower small businesses, where Hispanics are particularly active.

Puerto Rican singer Ambar is achieving her dream by bringing her music to the international market with her seventh album “Libre.”

Born Alma Iris Acosta, the singer made her debut in 1987 with the album “La Chica Laser,” and her next two albums - “Ambar” and “Por ese amor” - went gold.

But it is only with her seventh production that Ambar is achieving her dream of having her voice heard in the wider world now that the first two singles from the album, “Tengo ganas” and “Mi corazon no se compre,” have made it to the Billboard charts.

After taking a hiatus from music to raise her son, the singer has resumed her career with an eye toward the international market.

“I had to take a break to give myself time and energy for someone very important, my son,” said the artist in an interview with Efe.

Once she felt calm about the fact that “my son is older and has well-inculcated values,” it was time, she added, “to continue this dream of music.”

“Thank God I resumed it on the right foot, as they say in Puerto Rico” because the public has given her a “warm welcome,” she said.

Ambar will continue to promote her album in the United States and Dominican Republic and she said that her next single will be a joint effort with her countryman, reggaeton star Don Omar.

The Socialist mayor of this northwestern Spanish city, Francisco Rodriguez, was arrested Thursday on corruption charges.

The leader of the Socialist Party in the Galicia region, Pachi Vazquez, told reporters he fully trusts in the justice system and in the innocence of the Orense mayor and that he wants to see the matter resolved as quickly as possible.

Rodriguez is accused of influence-peddling, fraudulent conveyance and laundering assets, sources close to the investigation told Efe.

The mayor’s arrest was ordered by investigating magistrate Estela San Jose, who directed the “Operation Champion” corruption probe that toppled Jose Blanco, deputy national leader of the Socialists and a Cabinet member in the 2004-2011 government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Thursday’s arrest of a municipal official in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia’s capital, was apparently connected to the case against Mayor Rodriguez, officials told Efe.

Galicia, currently governed by the conservative Popular Party, will hold regional elections on Oct. 21.